


Novembers

by tarie



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-11
Updated: 2013-05-11
Packaged: 2017-12-11 12:57:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/798990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tarie/pseuds/tarie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Narcissa bites her nails to the quick every November and every November he calls while Lucius is away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Novembers

Narcissa bites her nails to the quick every November. She gnaws at them, very unladylike, and spits out the remnants of her glorious nails, even more unladylike, onto the marble floor of Malfoy Manor. 

Lucius has not been present at Malfoy Manor in November for the past ten years. November is when he takes what he likes to call his ‘annual leave’ to a place that only he knows the location of. Narcissa has long ago given up attempting to coerce Lucius into telling her where he was going. She has also long ago given up caring where he goes in November…or any time of the year, really.

****************

Narcissa bites her nails to the quick every November and every November he calls while Lucius is away.

He does not mind the rough state of her nails. He likes them like that. She does not often let down her defences and her gnawed nails are a badge of her uncertainty, of her anxiety.

****************

Narcissa bites her nails to the quick every November. This November is no different from the rest and yet it is. He can sense it somehow.

Her nails scratch him slightly when she curls her fingers around the column of his throat and slides them down, settling them at the nape of his neck. A slow smile curves the corners of his mouth up at this sensation, his fang-like incisors gleaming white against the candlelight. Her own mouth upturns in response and she shifts in his arms toward the candelabra. The sound of her exhalation can barely be heard over the rabbiting of his heart in his chest when he realizes what she is doing.

“I have to go,” he says, disentangling himself from her. The sky is darkening; there is not much time. He has been foolish, so caught up in _her_ that he has forgotten what tonight is.

“No,” she returns fiercely, capturing his wrists in her small hands, the jagged remains of her nails digging into his skin.

He understands at once what she is doing and cannot understand it at the same time. “Don’t,” he protests feebly, looking upon her with tired eyes.

“I am,” Narcissa replies with a conviction he has never heard before.

Tilting her face toward the open window, she laughs a bell-like laugh that seems so foreign and yet so familiar. “Look,” she whispers, not releasing her hold on his wrists one bit, not even when she can feel his flesh changing beneath her skin. “The moon is so full and beautiful tonight.”

The last thing he remembers before giving into the wolf is that Narcissa bites her nails to the quick every November and every November he calls while Lucius is away. The last thing he hears before the sound of his own howls drown everything out is her laughter. And then...there is blackness.


End file.
